An extremist, not a fanatic

January 14, 2018

Democracy in question

Nigel Farage and Arron Banks are starting to agree with many Remainers that there should be a second referendum. Both sides, of course, do so for the same motive – the belief they would win.

What this misses is that the first referendum was, as Robert Harris said, “the most depressing, divisive, duplicitous political event of my lifetime.” It was dominated by lies and by ignorance of basic facts. The result in effect went simply to the highest bidder. There’s no reason to suppose that a second referendum will be any better.

Worse still, the result conveyed very little information. What sort of Brexit did voters want? Why did they want it? Was it because they regarded increased sovereignty as an intrinsic good for which they are willing to sacrifice some income? Or did they believe that Brexit would make them better off? Or did they regard Brexit as a means of controlling immigration? If so, why did they want such controls. Was it as a means of raising wages in which case might there be better ways of achieving that goal? Or was it because of cultural concerns? If so, are these justified and are they worth paying for? Or was Brexit just a way of signalling discontent with elites? If so, are there more effective ways of getting elites to change, if change they should?

The referendum told us nothing about these questions, though opinion polls might have. We learned less from it than Tesco learns from a shopper’s most quotidian visit to one of its stores.

Before having a second referendum we should ask: how can decisions be better informed and more informative? This poses important questions. What organizational changes do we need to reduce plutocracy and achieve the democratic ideal of equal say? How can we get better decisions, informed by evidence? How can we ensure that experts are respected servants of the people rather than (seen as?) out-of-touch elites? How can we get a better media? (The BBC falls far short here, not just because it makes a fetish of a deformed conception of impartiality but because too many of its current affairs shows are merely the bantz of posh mediocrities – people who are the problem not the solution.)

And underpinning these questions is a deeper one: is healthy deliberative democracy even compatible with (actually-existing) capitalism?

With the very honourable exceptions of people like Paul Cotterill and Paul Evans, however, hardly anybody is asking these questions.

Politics has become like a game of football in which the only thing that matters is that our side wins and nobody cares about the quality or even basic honesty of the game. Most of us have forgotten that we are citizens as well as partisans.

In this sense, we are all neoliberals now. For me, one feature of neoliberalism is the elevation of what MacIntyre called external goods – power, wealth and fame – over internal goods of excellence. Almost everybody wants the external good of winning power to the neglect of the internal one of arriving at good decisions. Even many people who claim to oppose neoliberalism have, paradoxically, unthinkingly accepted one of its tenets.

The stakes here might be higher than generally supposed. As Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt point out, we cannot take the survival of democracy for granted. Democracies, they say, “die slowly, in barely visible steps.” Constitutions and institutions are insufficient protection against this. What we also need, they say, are “norms of mutual toleration.” These, though, are weakening. As Edward Luce writes, democracy “is only as good as the people who uphold it.” And we must question whether they (we) are good enough.

I really do hate the term, out-of-touch elites. It implies a blanket destain while hiding sectarian motive. At a stroke it dismisses the desire to discuss Useless Public Servants – to be 'allowed' to engage in democratic debate – Because who can debate a mob that hates everyone and everything!

If the EU referendum went to the highest bidder, surely that means Remain won right????? It not only had its campaign budget of £7m it also had a £9m expenditure by government on its behalf too, sending leaflets to every household promoting a Remain vote.

So it is lies to say Leave was a 'bought' vote. Leave had far less money overall than the Remain camp did.

"Worse still, the result conveyed very little information. What sort of Brexit did voters want?"

Maybe, but at least part of the problem with what's unfolded since is that, regardless of whether the public wanted to leave via the door, the window, or even the roof hatch, the government has insisted on going face-first through the wall (and the Leave side has kept insisting it's possible).

What seems to happen is that we end up with around 50% of the populace in favour of politic A and 50% in favour of politic B. There then ensues the heavy use of mis information, manipulation and so on to grab the essential few % points to get over the line. Once over the line the danger is that the electoral setup can be manipulated such that the incumbents stay in power.

The key danger is allowing the split to become 50/50 by restricting the number of viable political parties. This seems to be a long run game by political parties, eliminate the smaller parties. But of course any political debate is nuanced, politic A is really a collection of many shades of political opinion and so is politic B. But to allow nuance is to allow complication and is politically inconvenient and the cry does up 'weak government'.

Therefore it seems to me that to protect democracy we need to ensure there is a multiplicity of political parties - more competition. Around six parties looks to be a good number, sufficient to allow nuance. Perhaps the way we fund political parties is at the root of the problem, a winner takes all approach is bound to be bad for democracy.

I am not sure Remain are up to winning a second referendum. The people making the case will again be Goldman Sachs executives together with economists and their models - I am not sure people are ready to be persuaded. In any case their is the problem of free movement - since the expansion of the EU eastwards this has become an irresolvable problem.

"In any case their is the problem of free movement - since the expansion of the EU eastwards this has become an irresolvable problem."

The expansion eastwards of the EU was strongly supported by the UK (especially by Conservative governments). The newer members of the EU in eastern Europe (and southern Europe) favour free movement of labour because that was one of the main attractions of joining the EU, and the EU is unlikely to change its policies about free movement of labour because it has been a long-standing objective of the European project and because the newer members of the EU are in favour of it.

The UK has helped to create the problem that it is now complaining about. Arriving at good decisions (when they involve negotiation with other stakeholders) requires understanding how they see us, which in turn involves remembering what we have agreed with them previously. In the UK there is very little awareness of what has been said to, and agreed with, the EU and almost no understanding of how the EU sees us.

Neoliberalism is such an elastic term of abuse the its use covers up important difference. A lot of the people tarred with that brush, for example, are very much interested in non-external goods. In fact, many of 'em remind me of the Senatorial Romans of the early empire who recognized that an imperial order was inevitable and endeavored, with mixed success, to maintain an ethic of public service in an era of general corruption. That's an unhappy but not unintelligent stance for them and perhaps for us since a decent oligarchy may be the best outcome on offer.Whatever you think of Hillary Clinton, she didn't work all those hours to get her butt on a golden toilet.